Jonathan Herring laments a raft of predictable child protection failures
To understand Re S (Children) [2010] EWCA Civ 421, [2010] All ER (D) 169 (Apr) it is necessary to set out the background in some detail. The father, who was British and aged 58, started a relationship with a Romanian woman, when she was 15. He married her a few days after her 16th birthday. He then met another Romanian woman aged 17. He lived with both women and had children with them. Family life was described by Wilson LJ as “chaotic, abusive and dysfunctional”. He summarised the court’s findings concerning the father in dramatic terms: “[A] shocking, violent, selfish bully and a sexual predator, who had devoted a lifetime to wrongdoing.”
This case concerned the second of the two women, who at the time of the hearing had moved to England with the father. She had two children: a girl aged five and a boy aged nine months. Although the mother and father had now separated there was a concern that the father still posed a risk to the
